For many years I have noticed that people lose their ability to discuss issues with clarity and focus as their quality of life improves. When you’re hungry, you’re not going to lose sight of your goal. If you can’t breathe, literally nothing else matters. With your purse and your pantry packed full, you start getting distracted by all sorts of dumb sketchy stuff. What makes it so? And are people aware? If their behavior changes, they must be.

But the people who are so privileged by present circumstances that they lose their direction, seem to lose awareness as well. You can just listen to them. They really think they have it so tough.

Now that Elon Musk is asking the federal “workers” to list five accomplishments they made for the week just ended, I’m seeing all sorts of blowback against this about this rich guy somehow in this position to pass judgment on what the ordinary people are doing. With some ricochets from those of us who’ve had to fill out such reports for years, and never questioned the necessity. And you know, suddenly, the thought occurs to me:

“So-and-so shouldn’t have an opinion.”

For the last several years I’ve been hearing an awful lot of supposedly strong arguments, built around that weak core framework. No uterus, no opinion on abortion! Trump shouldn’t ever be in a high political office again! If you’re white, sit down, shut up and listen! Etc. etc. etc…it’s fake and phony because, if such people who aren’t supposed to have opinions happen to have the “right” ones, you know the muzzle-obsessed person who wants them defrocked of any influence, suddenly will swivel 180 degrees on that. Oh that’s the right opinion. Everybody listen to this guy.

Also, we’ve been asked to consent — and apparently already given our consent — to living in a world of bureaucrats. This-or-that open question, the resolution of which will impact people’s lives irreversibly forever, will be decided by such-and-such a commission populated by strangers whose names you aren’t allowed to know, whom you’ll never meet. And their decision is final, there is no appeal. We keep running into that, over and over again, and have accepted that as normal. So against that backdrop, getting all particular about who can & can’t have an opinion seems a bit odd.

But back to my sudden thought. If we’re so privileged we’re unaware of our privilege, and we’re lacking a an altimeter, flying blind, with little instrumentation to reliably assess that we’re hovering so high that we can no longer focus on what’s important — wouldn’t this be a good tip-off? If you’re wondering where your next meal is coming from, you’re not going to be too concerned about who’s got an opinion about it or who’s allowed to pontificate about it. “So and so shouldn’t be in a position to say” is something you’re only going to hear from spoiled people. Spoiled, sight-impaired, tin-eared people.

Because the truth is, just about everyone has opinions. You can shame them into silence, but they’re still going to have the opinion. What, you thought because you couldn’t hear the opinion, the opinion simply went away? Or the person holding the opinion just evaporated into thin air? You’re even more spoiled than I thought.

Our concern should be about whether the opinions are correct.

So Elon Musk is going to scour over these five bullet points about what “you” managed to get done this week. Him, or some delegate of his. And form an opinion about whether you’re worth your weight…which may go one way, or the other way, and it may be right or wrong. He might screw it up and fire you even though you’re a vital cog in the machine. That’s the fear. But the fear-mongering isn’t about that. It’s that Elon shouldn’t be deciding this.

And that denunciation, in turn, doesn’t offer anything by way of a substitute person to decide this instead of Elon. There should be no decider. This is why I see it as a first world thing. “Nobody should have an opinion about the blah blah blah” — means — I have a cushy lifestyle, or lack of accountability, built around the blah. I have people slaving away for my benefit when I’m not doing anything to earn it…and it depends on blah. Or I’m doing things I know are wrong, and I get away with it…because of blah. The blah blah blah is the bough over my cradle, and I’m the baby, so I don’t want anyone screwing with that. NO ONE SHOULD HAVE AN OPINION.

Without “civilization” having advanced to the point of decline, and the spoiling effect it has; the lion chasing the gazelle, who will starve to death if the chase doesn’t end in his favor, doesn’t care who has an opinion about it. The gazelle, running for its life, isn’t too spun up about such things either. The farmer who has to get the work done, cares only about whether all the hay bales can be loaded into the truck in so-many-minutes so he can get on with the rest of his list. He’s not going to care who has an opinion about it.

Things like this matter. They limit the advance of civilization. If civilization can advance, but in so doing inspire the rise of these phony arguments, then the advancement of civilization is limited. Just like the speed of a rocket car is limited by the inertia and the headwind pounding on the nose cone, as the greater speeds are achieved. That’s us, we’re the car. Or, our civilization is the car. Our government, for the time being. If we want to go any faster, maybe the time has come to stop working on a hotter and mightier rocket engine, and take a look at the aerodynamics involved.

The concern is that our government has become a jobs program. Elon Musk is behaving as if it is one. The rebuttal is “Elon shouldn’t have an opinion about that,” and that’s a very silly, very counterproductive rebuttal. It protests too much, suggesting that all or most of the angst and vituperation against Mr. Musk’s efforts, are inspired by a situation which finds him correct. And his efforts overdue.

They’re arguing against him, the way people argue when they’re fat, dizzy and disoriented, inebriated from the elixir of long-standing affluence. The way people argue when they haven’t been wondering where their next meal is coming from, for a very long time. If they’re so sure Elon Musk is in the wrong, they need to figure out how to argue like a starving lion. Focus more on where the meat is. Not leave it up to the richest man in the world to ponder such things.